White Feather
by LauraHuntORI
Summary: What is the nature of bravery, or of cowardice? Is it braver to die for what you believe in than to refuse to die for what you do not believe in? Isn't the instinct for survival the strongest instinct we possess? Four men may have more than four answers.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: _ "_**_The men they fought and the men did fall  
Cut down by bayonet and musket ball  
and many of these brave young men  
Would never fight for, would never fight for their king again_

_"Come laddies, come  
Hear the cannon roar,  
Take the King's Shilling,  
And you'll die in war."_ –from the song The King's Shilling, by Ian Sinclair

**Disclaimer: **I'm not even a custodian, my dears, let alone an owner. These characters and their settings are the work of others. I hope I do not offend with my homage.

* * *

"I shouldn't have promised my Dad not to enlist," William Mason admitted in frustration.

"Why did you?" Mr. Branson asked from behind his newspaper a few places down the table. The chauffeur's thoughts were full of another William's promise.

The footman blew out a breath of frustration. "I don't know. Because he's my Dad, and he asked me to. Because I'm the only one of his children left."

_'What must that be like?' _Mr. Branson wondered_, _stricken. He thought of all his brothers and sisters. What if they were _all _dead? Jesus. He wanted to ask how many siblings the blonde young man had started out with, but found he couldn't. "He doesn't want you to be killed," he said instead.

"He wants to make a coward of me," William said.

"'Every decent man of our age must be a coward and a slave,'" the chauffeur quoted in amusement.

But William was not a utopian socialist, and had never read Notes from the Underground.

"You can laugh, Mr. Branson, but you and I should both be fighting for King and Country at this very minute."

The chauffeur's expression hardened. "Don't included me with your king and country. The last king of Ireland was Brian O'Neill."

* * *

_Glorious sunshine bathed the beach at Bray. _

_Tom lay on the warm sand perpendicular to his half-brother, his head resting on Will's stomach. It was a day for rejoicing: Will's birthday, but Tommy's own stomach was in a knot. "How soon you will go?" he couldn't resist asking. _

_"Will you miss me?" William asked, amusement rippling in the lazy, lilting voice._

_"Liam!" Pegeen stood towering over her younger full and half-brothers like a giantess. She and her husband and little ones had come from Dublin for Liam's eighteenth birthday celebration. "Is it true, what Da Robbie's saying, that you've promised him you'll wait until you're twenty-one to go in the Army?"_

_"Mmm-hmm," the older boy murmured. _

_"Well," his sister said, "maybe you've some sense after all." She took herself off, while her younger half-brother craned his head around to stare at the older boy._

_"You're staying?" he repeated in delighted disbelief. _

_"I'm staying," came the warm reassurance. _

_Tom grinned, smiling back up at the blue sky he could now enjoy. "What did Da say to convince you?" Tommy had been trying to persuade the older boy to change his mind for months._

_William laughed. "He said you weren't ready for me to leave you." _

_"What?!" Tommy was craning his head around again. "Is that all?"_

_"It wasn't all he said," Will admitted. "But it was the thing he said that convinced me." _

* * *

"Mr. Bates," Anna greeted her sweetheart with relief. "Can you do me a favor?"

"Of course."

The head housemaid smiled. "Go and check on Mr. Branson."

"Won't he be in later?"

"Probably not. No one is dining here tonight."

"Why does he need to be checked on?" he asked.

"A letter came for him in the first post, from his mother in Dublin, and he looked… strange… after he read it."

"All right, I'll see to him," the valet promised. "I need to order the motor for his lordship anyway."

* * *

Silence reigned in the garage. Mr. Branson looked at the newspaper. On 1 January 1916, the 1st Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers had at last been ordered to leave the Dardanelles Penninsula. _It should have been good news. _

The young man's eye moved to the letter from his mother. But Tom's half-brother, William Ryan, had not left with them. _Will was gone._

* * *

Despite the chill, the big doors of the garage were open.

"Mr. Branson?" the valet called.

"I'm here, Mr. Bates," the young man said, rising from the running board of the Renault where he'd been seated.

"Are you all right? Anna was worried." The valet handed over Lord Grantham's note ordering the motor.

The chauffeur smiled ruefully. "How does she always know?" He opened the note and moved toward the office alcove to write the order on the schedule.

Mr. Bates followed him. "Woman's intuition. She saw you'd gotten a letter from home. And you've an easy face to read."

Mr. Branson glanced up to give his friend a half-smile. "Well, I'm not English after all. No, I'm not all right. After all these bloody months, they're finally leaving the Dardanelles, and my brother's gone missing. He wrote me it was like Hell there. I suppose he must be dead, God knows most of them are. But they don't know."

"I'm very sorry for your trouble." The valet's face was expressionless except for the thoughtful crease in the broad forehead. "Can you bear it better with grief, or with hope?" he wondered, the openness of his question a sign of their friendship.

"I don't know… In a way I'd like to mourn, but what if he isn't dead?" He swallowed. "Can I ask you something, Mr. Bates?"

"Yes, you may," the older man assented.

"You were a soldier. Why do men enlist?"

"For 'King and Country.'"

Anger as well as grief tinged the lilting voice. "What does that even mean?"

"I don't know," Mr. Bates told him. "Maybe it's just words. There must be as many different reasons to enlist as there are men in the military: to prove one's bravery, to defend one's home… for conquest, for glory, for a career, for bloodlust… to keep from being called coward." He smiled. "Or perhaps because one is under a _geis _to fight whenever battle is offered."

Mr. Branson snorted. "Like Cuchulain, or Finn MacCool? It may be… Thank you, Mr. Bates."

"For what?"

"For…" The young man shook his head. "I don't know."

* * *

Mud, blood, bullets, and death. The air was alive with the bursting of bombs and the booming of guns, but many of the men were already dead. But not Lang. Lang was NOT DEAD.

Not yet.

* * *

Joseph Moseley hurried past the poster, seeking to evade the pointing finger of the Secretary of State. Lord Kitchener importuned him to join the army every time he walked past. _'No, you don't want me!'_ he thought. The newly enacted Military Service Act crossed his agitated mind. _Conscription! _

Mr. Molseley was suddenly breathless… but it was from hurrying, not from fear.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: ***-*-* Warning: Contains graphic battle description. *-*-*

**_"…_**_if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive." –_Henry V_, _Act IV, Scene iii, William Shakespeare

**Disclaimer:** I'm not even a custodian, my dears, let alone an owner. These characters and their settings are the work of others. I hope I do not offend with my homage.

* * *

Every time Mr. Crawley returned to Downton, Mr. Moseley felt it to be a reproach, as though he were somehow less than loyal not to have enlisted when his employer did. Dad insisted it was his imagination, but since his run-in with those White Feather girls, Mr. Moseley the younger was literally jumping at shadows.

Mrs. Bird assured him it was nothing to worry about, but… he wished to forget. And he had the night off, because Mrs. Crawley and now-Lt. Crawley had gone into York to dine with relatives of Mrs. Crawley. Mr. Moseley decided he would just step around to the pub.

* * *

As Mr. Bates descended the service stairs, he could hear raised voices emanating from the servants' hall. He paused near the bottom to listen.

"—lieve in this war!" That was William.

"_What_ do you believe in?" An undeniably irritated Branson snapped. "You must be forgetting that it was only six years ago Kaiser Wilhelm rode next to the Duke of Connaught at the old king's funeral in the guise of a British Field Marshal!"

To Bates, the way young Irishman enunciated the words _Duke of Connaught _said everything the young man was not saying about the likelihood of the current king's being concerned with anyone's sovereignty but his own. Still, what did William know or care about that? And how old did Mr. Branson think the footman had been when King Edward died?

Meanwhile, the argument had continued unabated "—man's duty to fight for King and Country!" No matter how many times the two young men brangled on the subject of the war, William persisted in believing this catchphrase would counter any point the chauffeur cared to raise. Mr. Bates wondered if it did.

The valet had a clear view of Miss O'Brien's face in profile as the lady's maid sat turned slightly to her left to watching the show. Her normally sour features were transformed by delight.

Mr. Branson was as usual unimpressed with the patriotic sentiment, but mercifully forbore to quote Oscar Wilde in favor of a rather more homely brand of logic. "Your king embroils himself in an entangling alliance with a foreign power, and this somehow obligates _you_? If the king were to jump off a cliff, would it be your duty to jump down after him?"

"Ye—"

"You'd loyally drive his lordship over a cliff if ordered to, wouldn't you, Mr. Branson?" Mr. Bates interjected smoothly, stepping through the doorway, since he deemed it past time to intervene. He saw that William's face was red with anger.

"It's time," Mr. Bates told the chauffeur, who had responded to the valet's sally only with a snort. The Irishman stood to shrug himself into his uniform jacket, then came around the long table on the opposite side from William, passing behind Miss O'Brien on his way out of the room. The lady's maid's attention was still focused on the troubled-looking footman seated two places down on her side of the table.

"Dad's just _got _to change his mind," William muttered.

* * *

Mr. Bates followed Mr. Branson down the service corridor and out into the courtyard. When the outside door was closed behind them, he put a hand out to catch the younger man's uniformed sleeve.

Mr. Branson stopped to look at him curiously. "Mr. Bates? I can't keep his lordship waiting."

"He isn't down yet."

The chauffeur did a double take. "You said it was time."

"Yes," the valet replied. "It's time for you to lay off William."

The words lay flat in the air between the two men for a moment.

Branson blinked. "I don't understand what you mean. We were just—"

"I know what you were doing. I'm not deaf. And I've heard the two of you going at it over and over."

Mr. Branson suddenly remembered what it had felt like to be five years old. His heart began to pound, and childhood defenses kicked in: "He's the one who starts it! He keeps saying—"

"You're older than he is, and stronger, and you should be helping him to keep his promise to his father, not urging him to break it."

Mr. Branson looked shocked. "I certainly haven't been—"

"You may not mean it that way, but that's the effect you're having."

"What?"

"He wants to keep his promise, but he also wants to enlist. When you argue with him, you force him to defend his decision to fight, and the more he defends it, the more likely he is to do it, no matter what he promised his father."

"I don't know, Mr. Bates. William's filial piety is strong. I'm guessing it's a lot stronger than his 'patriotism.'"

"Maybe," Bates conceded. "At least, you'd better hope so," he continued mildly, "because if it isn't, then in addition to experiencing the horrors of war, our young friend will have the guilt of disobeying his father to contend with."

Branson sighed, and the forceful expulsion of breath told the valet he had carried his point even before the young man said, "Do you want me to go back inside and apologize?"

Bates shook his head. "Just let him be."

* * *

"We were supposed to be reinforced," Lang grumbled, splashing water on his face. "Washing" was a travesty in the trenches, he thought. _What would his mother have said if she'd ever seen him this dirty? _

Petersen, Lang's battle buddy, laughed. He pushed his sleeve higher up his muddy forearm to show off a long gash just barely healed. "'This wound I had upon St. Crispin's day,'" he declaimed with a wink, before rolling his sleeve back down and fastening it.

"You can joke," the prim former valet told him, "but—"

"It's all I can do," the former actor agreed, his last words before the bullet took him. He jerked upright into stillness, and Lang saw the light leave the clear grey eyes.

Lang opened his mouth, to call his friend's name, to scream, when the second bullet hit.

Then the expressive grey eyes were gone, and terrible things were on Lang's face and in his mouth: the salty thickness of Petersen's blood, and the terrible jelly of his brains.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note: **_"__Who best bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best." _–On His Blindness, John Milton

**Disclaimer:** I'm not even a custodian, my dears, let alone an owner. These characters and their settings are the work of others. I hope I do not offend with my homage.

* * *

William Mason did not complain of the extra work that had fallen to his lot since Thomas' departure to the Army Medical Corps. His only complaint was that he himself was not also in the Army.

"There'll be time enough for that later," Mr. Carson advised him. "Remember, William: 'They also serve who only stand and wait.'"

* * *

Branson would always remember his first time.

It was at the tail-end of a crisp afternoon, and he had been leaning easily against the door of the motor looking lazily for the bird he could hear singing close by. He marveled at the light show as the sun filtered through the glorious reds, greens, and golds of the autumn foliage, turning the tree-lined street where he waited for Lord Grantham into a cathedral to rival the stained glass glory of St. Patrick's at Evensong.

In addition to the beauty of nature, there was pulchritude on offer in the persons of the three young women standing across the way, giggling. He had noticed them, because they kept looking over at him and whispering to each other, and he had assumed at first that, like Lady Edith, they were interested in the motor. Or, considering the way the prettiest of the three was blushing, in _him. _He smiled at them encouragingly, and they ducked their heads together in apparent embarrassment. Branson was no coxcomb, but he did not think he was mistaken in thinking that the other two girls were urging the pretty one to approach him.

She finally did. A girl younger than Daisy he judged, and dazzlingly fair, beautiful in a way opposite to the beauty of Lady Sybil, a slight, golden, waif-like creature, she tripped up to him and held out a tiny closed fist, palm down. "Take it!" she demanded breathlessly, in the treble accents of an angel.

Branson, like any young man totally unopposed to a little light flirtation, reached for her hand with both of his own. "What do you have for me, darlin'?"

She opened her fist and released something into his hand, yelling, "Just what you deserve, _coward!_" then turned and _ran_, her friends tearing away after her, as though Satan himself chased them, though so complete was his surprise, the chauffeur had not moved. He stood still looking down at her 'gift,' a bent and bedraggled little white feather.

Branson's attention was caught by movement near the ground. A black and white bird, perhaps the same one who'd been singing earlier, confronted him belligerently.

"Did those girls steal this from you?" Branson asked the avian, black leather-clad fingers absently straightening the bent rachis, and smoothing the barbs and barbules of the vane back into order.

The little bird chirped his displeasure.

Branson glanced up the street the way the White Feather girls had gone. "Not very brave of them to run away, was it?"

The bird fluttered up into the tree, while Branson pulled out his memorandum book and placed the feather safely between its pages. He admired their willingness to demonstrate on behalf of their beliefs, but their _valor_ did not inspire him to join the Army.

* * *

God had relented. At least six of Lang's fellow soldiers and no less than two superior officers saw the shell explode when Lang at last went down. So even though there was no visible wound to be found on his body, the tag that was attached to his person, which sent him mercifully away from the front, bore an honourable W, and not the hated S.

* * *

It was a great good fortune that Joseph Moseley disliked beer. Men of his class were not often called upon to drink wine, and George at the Grantham Arms had strict orders from old Mr. Moseley never to serve young Mr. Moseley more the one hard cider at a sitting. If Joseph wanted to drink any more, he was given sweet cider.

Had he liked beer, this war would have made him a drunk, because they served no non-alcoholic malt beverages.

But there was no real safety to be had in the pub. On occasion, the White Feather girls ventured even here.

"Let's see what cowards there are in here seeking _Dutch courage_!" one of the woman said, barging into the taproom. She offered one of her feathers to Mr. Moseley, who stared at it and began stuttering. His hands shook as they gripped his cider. Couldn't they leave him in peace?

"Here you, woman," one of the men said, "We don't want none of that in here." The other men shooed the woman to the door, where she met Branson coming in.

"I'm already a Tommy," Mr. Moseley heard the young man say, "but I don't mind wearing your favor, since you're so kind to offer it to me." As he entered the taproom he was sticking the feather in his peaked driving cap, tucking it securely between the crown and his goggles. He stepped up to the bar. "A pint, please, George."

The barman grinned, and filled the young man's order.

Mr. Moseley blinked, but picked up the feather the woman had left on the table next to him, and tucked it jauntily through his buttonhole.


End file.
